60g Cake flour

3 yolks (using 60g eggs)

20g sugar

40g sun flower oil

36g milk

1 tsp yam essence

violet food colouring (as desired)

Meringue

Caster Sugar 45g

4 egg whites

1/4 tsp cream of tartar

METHOD

1. Preheat oven to 160 degree celcius.

2. Combine egg yolks and sugar in a bowl. Add yam essence, oil and coconut milk and blend together. Add in cake flour and mix until batter is sticky.

3. To make meringue, whisk the egg whites with cream of tartar until foamy. Add in half of the sugar and continue beating for a couple minutes, then add remaining sugar and whisk until stiff peak. A handheld electric whisk works best for the job.

4. Add 1/3 of merginue to egg yolk mixture and fold in lightly. Then add former batter into the remaining meringue and fold in with swift actions.

5. Pour batter into a 17cm chiffon tin and place in oven (lower second rack) to bake for 20 mins at 160 degree celcius and 25mins at 150 degree celcius.

Teacher’s Day is coming up and while parents are preparing the nicest gifts, I have decided to go with home baked cookies attached to a handmade card crafted by the kids themselves. The original shortbread recipe came from Guai Shu Shu with his easy to remember formula (1 sugar : 2 butter : 3 plain flour) and the method to roll the dough into a beautiful rainbow came from Phay Shing of Loving Creations.

Here goes the adapted recipe.

Ingredients:
125g icing sugar

250g salted butter (I used entire block)

375g plain flour

3 drops of lemon essential oil (optional)

Method:

1. Set the oven to 165 degree celcius.

2. Blend all the ingredients above together to form a dough.

3. Split the dough into 6 smaller portions and add in colouring to form rainbow. (Note: I have only used half the dough and kept the other half in a bag to freeze for ‘future play’). Phay Shing worked out her dough weights beautifully. I didn’t follow dutifully and thus got a thicker band of blue. 😛

These are the proportions as worked out by Phay Shing.

Red 81g,

Orange 69g

Yellow 56g

Green 44g

Blue 31g

Purple 19g

4. To roll dough into a rainbow, you used a little bit of uncoloured dough and roll it into a thin rod. Freeze until it’s hard. Give it about 15mins.

5. Then roll purple dough to a rectangular shape (roll on a plastic or use a cut open zip lock bag) and wrap it around the frozen ‘rod’ from step 3 (pull the plastic to guide the dough around the frozen rod). Roll it as you would do with sushi roll. Send it back to freezer to harden.

8. Cut away the end of the frozen roll to reveal the rainbow. Then slice cross section. The thickness is approx 0.5cm. You may wish to bake the cookie round which is what I did. However, if you want a rainbow arch, cut the cookie halfway to get semi-circle. (Tip: my dough was very hard and I dare not attempt to slice into semi-circles. However, after baking and while shortbread is still hot, I took it off the tray and use a sharp knife to slice into half. With this method, I was able to get straight and neat cut.)

9. Bake for 15 minutes at 165 degree celcius.

It was a very buttery and fragrant slice of cookie. I love it and resistance is futile. 😀

1. Beat softened butter and icing sugar till light and fluffy. Add in 3 drops of lemon oil. (I use doterra lemon oil which is a high grade edible essential oil purchased from Aromacompass) Sift in potato starch and flour, mix to form soft dough.

2. Roll into small ball, arrange on lined baking pan and press lightly with a fork. (tip 1: if dough is too soft, leave in fridge for 15 mins before moulding. tip 2: dip fork in a cup of water each time before pressing on cookies to prevent sticking.)

3. Bake in preheated oven at 170C for 15 minutes.

Different Variants:

I have made charcoal and matcha variants. They both tasted great especially the matcha cookies. Everybody loves it. To make them, add a tsp of charcoal powder or matcha powder to above recipe in step (1). I would also try milo and chocolate variants in my next attempt. For the chocolate variant, I will also add 3 drops of doterra peppermint. After all, what is a cup of afternoon tea without chocolate and peppermint 🙂

A swiss roll to start the lunar year of 2014. The Chinese character represents ‘horse’ in reference to the jubilant year of the horse. There are 2 ‘horses’ in my family. The roll is filled with freshly whipped cream and sweet peach slices.

Sakura Matcha roll with cream cheese and very sweet navel orange slices. This is a lady’s roll. Having said that, my hubby absolutely love the matcha infused flavour.

Many of the rainbow recipes use genoise sponge. I prefer to use chiffon sponge for its soft cottony texture. The experiment gave rise to a lightweight cake. As my family doesn’t like too much cream, I have layered minimal swiss meringue buttercream between the cakes and topped it with fresh strawberries. Swiss meringue buttercream is highly manageable in our climate in Singapore. Personally, I would have loved to smear heaps of freshly whipped cream. However, given that there are 6 layers of cake, my female guests may not be so obliging with the portions of whipped cream I have to pile in there.

The final result in surprisingly delightful. I had it for high tea the next day with freshly brewed chrysanthemum. The cake serves approximately 10 pax (with each of the girls having a small dainty slice). Not only does it looks good, but this time, the cake also tasted great. I had a teeny weeny slice leftover and I purposely left it until the 3rd day … the cake passed the freshness test with flying colours!

6. At this stage, use 6 small bowls to prepare 6 different coloured batter for the rainbow. I use wilton colours. To achieve pastel colours, go sparingly on the colours. Set aside the batter.

7. For meringue, whisk 2 egg whites and slowly add in the sugar. Whisk until glossy and stiff peaks are formed.

8. Split the meringue into 2 portions for two different coloured batters.

9. I started with the darkest coloured batter (ie. purple, blue). Mix half the meringue with purple batter and the other half with blue batter. Carefully fold the mixtures.

9. Pour the purple & blue batters into their respective trays. Gently knock the trays (by dropping it on tabletop) to remove bubbles.

10. Bake in oven at 180 degree celcius for approx. 12-14 mins.

11. While the first bake is in progress, start whisking your second batch of meringue for the next two colours. Follow steps 7 – 9 through.

12. As I have only two 7″ trays, once the bake is done, the layer cakes are immediately removed from trays and left to cool on the racks.

13. Peel off baking paper from bottom and place it on top of cake to allow latent heat to escape.

14. Then quickly line the trays with new baking papers and proceed to pour in the next two coloured batters to bake.

15. Continue until all 6 layers of cake are baked.

16. After all the cake layers are cooled, proceed to assemble the rainbow cake.

17. Place a piece of cake on a cake board. Using a spatula, frost a thin layer of cream before laying on the next cake layer. I use swiss meringue buttercream. You may wish to use freshly whipped cream. Personal choice.

18. Repeat the process for the rest of the cake layers.

19. Refrigerate the cake to let it set for about 30mins.

20. Use a long clean knife. Run it under hot water and wipe it dry. Trim off the 4 sides of the cake (wipe clean your knife after each cut).

We were celebrating my boy’s birthday earlier on 9th August. Actually, I wasn’t sure if he was going to have a cake. I haven’t thought about it until my hubby asked me if I’m making or buying one. With a couple of hours handy … the rainbow just came and decided it wanted some butter cream in between the layers and a blue elephant propped on it. Everything about the cake is inspired by my boy … his love for colours, elephant being his favourite animal and buttercream topping his list of sweet nothings!

Yet, the cake was not pre-meditated. Which further affirms, if you’re BAKING and HAVING FUN, something great is bound to come out of it. And mind you, I’m no professional baker. So if I can do it, so can you.

This recipe was adapted from Sallys Baking Addiction. She named them “Death by Chocolate Cupcakes“. But I loved them too much to call such a dark name. Sinful as they may be, they are little starlets of happiness to whoever that care to wallop one down. So I simply call them Sweet Little Darling Choc Cupcakes here. Haha!

I have tried several chocolate cuppie recipes but this is my personal hot favourite. The cake flour gives it a wondrous fluffiness and adding baking chocolate rather than just cocoa powder (don’t say I never warn you) is truly the chocoholic thing to do. After spending one night in the fridge, the chocolate flavor came through even more intense giving the morsel the rightful richness that a true blue chocolate cake should have.